Save Our Figs calls on community to gather to witness council desecration of Laman St tomorrow

Save Our Figs are calling on members of the community to gather at Civic Park at 5am tomorrow morning (Friday) to form a community picket line, and to bear witness to Newcastle Council’s desecration of the Laman St trees, which they have been told will begin at 6am.

Save Our Figs co-spokesperson Fee Mozeley said that campaigners for the trees had exhausted all available options, but had not been able to counter the determination of anti-tree councillors and council officers, who had gone to extreme lengths to whip up public fear over the risk posed by the trees, and to repeatedly obstruct independent assessment of that risk.

“It’s devastating to us and the many thousands of good people in the community who have supported us in so many ways that it’s come to this,” Ms Mozeley said.

“The inspiring community effort behind this campaign has allowed us to rescue the trees from the brink of destruction before, and it’s going to be hard for all of us to accept the harsh reality of the chainsaws tomorrow morning.

SOF co-spokesperson Caity Raschke said, “We know that many in the community still can’t believe that we’ve reached this point, because people naturally expect that good sense will ultimately prevail, and they know that what we were asking for was so reasonable.

“But the resistance we encountered has been so bizarrely perverse that these trees now seem doomed to be unnecessarily sacrificed on the altar of council’s bloody-mindedness, and the desecration of Laman Street’s majestic cathedral arch will become the abiding legacy of a council that turned its back on reason and its own community,” Ms Raschke said.

“We’re calling on the people of Newcastle who care about both beauty and democracy to join us tomorrow morning to bear witness to this terrible act, so that those responsible know we care,” they said.

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For more information or comment, contact Fee Mozeley on 0424 026 056, or Caity Raschke on 0421 743 729.